40 
THE NEW AFRICA 
About a mile and a half below the fall, along the river’s 
course, the chasm conducting the water turns back at an acute 
angle, and here, at this spot, where I climbed down to the water’s 
edge, the knowledge of the true might of pure water can be 
experienced. Wave on wave, the current comes rushing down 
the strait, pushing and forcing itself along. As if too confined, the 
water seeks to rush over the wave preceding it; then, as if amazed 
at the opposition to its outlet by the altered course of the chasm at 
the angle, it strikes the opposing rock, bending downwards from 
the recoil to throw up conical-shaped hillocks in the centre of 
its current, which, living for a moment only, break away in 
sweeping whirlpools, following the course of the stream. Again 
the frothy, seething mass strikes the rock, and with a swishing 
hiss the mass is violently hurled to the opposite bank, forming 
a whirlpool whose outer edge crawls slowly against the stream 
along the opposite wall, until it is violently engulfed in the 
general mass of hurrying, seething, bubbling, rushing, dark 
green current down its new course. I sat lost in watching this 
ever changing marvellous scene, oblivious of self and time, until 
my native companion warned me that the sun was getting low; 
and gazing at him and my own body alternately in bewilder¬ 
ment—for the mighty scene had robbed me of all sense of pro¬ 
portion—I gained the impression that our stature had shrunk to 
that of pigmies. So vastly had the imposing spectacle expanded 
the senses, that, feeling a giant myself, it was quite a shock 
to be brought back to reality. Subdued, we silently ascended 
the cliff, to realise that it was four o’clock, and that I had 
sat for six hours, utterly lost to all but the wonderful picture 
before us. 
Below this point, in its extension, the chasm forms several zig¬ 
zags, each stretch of greater length than the last, narrowing as 
it goes along, till, at a point the natives told us of, one can throw 
a stone from one bank to the other, and the river is over-arched 
by rock forming a footpath used by the natives to cross over. 
Below this the river pours itself into a wide current again in 
open country. 
